I just finished the demo in about 1:15. It's fun, flows pretty well, and is already very well-polished. Etrian Odyssey seems to be a strong influence. I'm looking forward to more. Here's some specific feedback:
- I strongly appreciate that you have designed a hand-crafted dungeon (not procedurally generated) and use no generative AI.
- It might be a good idea to add the "turn-based" and/or "turn-based combat" tags. I was just looking for games exactly like this on Itch the other day, but it didn't come up, because I was filtering by those tags. I know we only get ten, but maybe the 3D tag is less necessary.
- Control rebinding would be very helpful.
- The on-screen keyboard threw me at first because it's QWERTY rather than alphabetical, which I think is more common for gamepad-driven input. I think this probably goes double for players with AZERTY etc., unless it detects that and reconfigures.
- I purchased some starting weapons before assigning skills (as the game directs you to do), but I didn't realize that some skills require specific weapon types. Everyone just starts with a knife, so for some classes it isn't clear what they are "meant" to use (I gave my sentinel a hatchet, for example).
- Character-specific cursor memory in combat would be helpful.
- The map is a bit hard to read. Mainly, it's hard to see the walls because they are almost the same color as the floor, so it's hard to tell where I've been. Making the walls bolder and brighter would help here. I would also like a bit higher opacity on the floors, although the feature icons are fine.
- I tend to hoard skill points in this type of system, and the starting selections are pretty overwhelming for just starting the game, so I didn't try out too many. Blood Link could really use a speed boost, since the sentinel is pretty slow in armor and it tends to go off at the end of the round. I'm not sure about this skill in general, since it only protects one character. That makes it not very useful for general team protection, but it's also not useful in an emergency, because it's so slow.
- I'd like to be able to pass a movement turn so that the visible encounters (spiders) will move without me having to move, but I understand if your movement puzzles are designed with this limitation in mind. Because of this, I did get trapped by one while going for a treasure chest, which is probably working as intended.
- I would personally enjoy more "dungeon master" text (aside from the dialogue beacons) in the dungeon to set the scene and flesh out the details, but that is all personal preference.
- I appreciated finding some rare equipment in treasure chests. I think this is an important part of exploring dungeons, but in some games there isn't anything to find except basic consumables, and that takes some of the fun out of it.
- I was also glad to not have to spend skill points to harvest resources.